Recap

It’s been a busy few weeks so instead of trying to think of some new clever article I’m going to recap the events of the last fourteen days.

Work has been very steady. New client work coming as well as collaborative efforts with local freelancers and agencies are keeping me busy. In spite of all the new projects coming my way I have found the time to get out, do a little socializing and learn a few new things.

The May meeting of Cleveland Web Standards Association was held in our usual location at Tri-C West Campus. For this meeting we were honored to have our own Joe Fiorini give an overview of Ruby programming with an emphasis on the Rails framework. The talk was wonderful and Joe really explained everything in terms even a layperson would understand. Excellent job, Joe!

This past Wednesday I was honored to be part of a panel of CWSA members presenting for the Northeast Ohio Chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association. Beth Dean, Bridget Stewart, Brad Colbow, Brendan Cullen, Julie Cousins and yours truly gave a talk on Web Standards. I was very happy with how well the talk was received. Beth and Bridget covered the basics of web standards with an excellent opening presentation. The question and answer session was great and my fellow panelists were brilliant. I do hope I didn’t bore people to tears when spoke at length on microformats. Once I get started on that subject I can’t seem to stop talking.

On Thursday, a few other CWSA peeps and I made a trip to Ohio City for Cleveland’s first Startup Drinks event held at the Bier Markt. Beth, Bridget, Brad and I met the organizer, Andrew Kavanaugh, for a delicious dinner at Phnom Penh across the street. The Pad Thai was amazing.

Once we got to the Bier Markt, we met some others in the local Cleveland tech scene. People discussed their new projects, their passions and of course beer. During all of the hand shaking and glass tipping I found time to embarrass myself by playing a game of pool with Andrew. Had he not scratched the eight ball it would have been a humiliating defeat. In addition to seeing all of the new faces we also ran into some old friends. Chris Miller, lead developer of Mahalo, stopped by as well as fellow CWSA member, Joe Fiorini who revealed some details about his super secret project FS15. It will be quite exciting, but I won’t say any more about it. Keep checking the site for updates.

That sums up the more major events of the past two weeks. Some exciting things are in store for the near future, but I’ll save those for other posts.